Volunteers among the bright spots in Houston's recovery

Missionaries from the Texas Houston South Mission clean out Tom and Leigh Killian's Meyerland home. ﻿

Photo: Jon Shapley, Staff

Church volunteers in yellow shirts bent down to receive direction from Dottie Nachlas, who sat in a wheelchair Wednesday as she scanned the garage of the Meyerland home where she has lived 56 years.

"I'm trying to find my box that has my clothes in it," she said.

The 86-year-old pointed to the stack of boxes and totes filled with those belongings not damaged by Memorial Day's severe flooding. Everything else - carpets, mattresses, a sofa and even sheetrock - had already been dragged to the curb by volunteers and carried to the dump in city trucks.

Leigh Killian, a former television reporter who once sought out storm damage, had observed the hard labor required to tear out sheetrock, rip up carpets and bag possessions reduced to moldy garbage. Living it is more overwhelming than she expected. "It's exhausting" she said, standing next to a high water line almost four feet up the wall of her garage. "You're working on it morning, noon and night."

Killian teared up as she thanked Brian Ashton, president of a Mormon mission in the Houston area, for organizing to have dozens of missionaries suspend their usual duties to help families with flood clean-up. Pounding with hammers and prying with shovels, the young adults lifted up wood flooring and punched through drywall, carrying the debris out of the house on bed sheets, stepping over Lincoln Logs and princess dresses strewn on the floor.

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"We're trying to salvage what we can," Killian said. "There's just so many forms and people you need to call."

The Mormon volunteers who helped the Killians Wednesday came to Houston from Utah and Arizona, New Zealand and Nevada.

"I've never seen a flood like this where it covers the entire house and you have to take everything out," said Elder Micah Havens, 21 of South Jordan, Utah.

David Hoyt, who grew up in mountainous North Salt Lake City, Utah, said he has been glad to help, and surprised to learn what people value most in difficult times. At one house, they tore up floors and swept out mud, all while the wheelchair-bound resident kept asking them if they'd seen his Korean War veteran ball cap.

"Why does it matter? It's just a hat," the 20-year-old remembered asking him. "His dad was a 32nd Degree Master Mason and he had his dad's two pins on the hat."

Hoyt found the hat sitting on a table outside. "He was more happy about that than any of the other work we did," he said.

A few blocks away, Nachlas expressed gratitude for the slew of volunteers who have helped gut her longtime home. She said it was the first time the brick ranch house had ever flooded.

"I've got to get the restoration crews going," she said. "I need furniture, my sofa. I mean, it's a lot of stuff. But those are material things."

A moment later the tasks ahead seemed too long to list, yet inconsequential compared to the decades of memories in the home built by her late husband, Sid.

"You couldn't ever understand it unless you've lived in a house 56 years," she said. "I really don't know what to say."

A contractor arrived to help restore the home and pulled into the driveway. His truck's tire crunched glass as it rolled over a picture frame filled with water-warped family photos.

Jayme Fraser covers government and growth in Katy and Fort Bend. She has worked at the Houston Chronicle since 2012, writing about city government, religion, housing and homelessness. Before coming to Texas, she reported on state and tribal governments, social services, higher education and other topics at dailies throughout the Northwest.